cadet blogs

I am currently writing you from good old USCGA summer school! I am taking summer classes so that I can be a Marine and Environmental Science major. I have to catch up my math by taking Calculus II and in addition, I get to take Organizational Behavior and Leadership to get that out of the way and open up my schedule a bit down the road. Summer school is pretty fun because we don’t have a lot going on. We were joking and saying that it was the most real college experience we were going to get because we can leave every weekend and we only have two or three classes a day. Our first week down, I can say that this phase of my summer is going to move really fast, much like the first half when I was on Eagle!!!

Eagle was a lot of fun and I learned a lot on my five week cruise from NewLo to St. Martin, to Aruba, and Guantanamo Bay, finally ending in St. Pete, Florida. I was Basic Damage Control qualified, as well as Soundings and Security and Helm and Lookout qualified. We learned how to navigate using only the sun and the stars, and we became very familiar with the fire fighting systems onboard the ship, in addition to learning the pinrail and the sails used to make Eagle go. We saw flying fish and dolphins, sharks, and even three whales on our journey. My favorite port call had to be St. Martin; not only was it the first port call after a long two weeks under sail, but I also participated in a community service project where we painted a school for undocumented children, and later that day a group of us went and exploring and later cliff jumping! All of the other port calls were cool but this was my most memorable.

As for the rest of the summer, I have to finish summer school and then we get three weeks of leave before school starts. Being back has been really nice because the weather is perfect and there are not very many people here. Also, the class of 2016 can wear rec gear which makes liberty so much more fun! I am excited to see the swabs come in and to see all of the new second class be cadre!